F*** Em

I don’t ordinarily swear on here and certainly not in the title. This is a family blog after all, but sometimes that’s all that comes to mind.

In this one Ipswich Town were, whatever dubious delusions Steve Cooper was willing to entertain afterwards, comfortably the better side. Between Stephy Mavadidi’s third-minute line fluff and the 86th minute the Foxes had barely had a shot in anger. 83 minutes is more than double the 40 we managed to stay on top against Brentford and had we been anywhere near as clinical this would have been over long before the “series of unfortunate events” turned the tide for the away team.

A defensive unit of Aro Muric, Ben Johnson, Dara O’Shea, Cameron Burgess and Leif Davis was four fifths of what we originally intended to start the season with, before injuries to Johnson and Tuanzebe’s good form intervened, and it played like a plan that had come together.

When his focus isn’t wavering Aro Muric is an imposing Premier League goalkeeper. His best performance since Brighton, which also came after a week of getting criticised. Goalkeepers are weirdos so maybe he needs a bit of abuse to get in the zone. At right back Johnson had the tricky Mavadidi in his pocket and as the game went on his and O’Shea’s front foot defending helped pen Leicester into their own half. Burgess looked unruffled defensively and less like he was playing at his limit than previously. As for Leif Davis, well, if Thomas Tuchel isn’t already looking up his phone number that’ll be his first mistake as England manager.

Further forward, Phillips and Morsy dovetailed as well as at any point this season, though with hindsight we could have done with Jens Cajuste cutting short their partnership by 60 seconds or so. Leif Davis’ beautiful caress past Mads Hermansen will generate more hype, but Morsy’s cross field pass was pretty luscious too.

For the second week running we looked well-organised across the front line in and out of possession. With Omari Hutchinson wide he seemed harder to double up on. Conor Chaplin was elusive, he used the ball well, he had the self-belief to take shots on. If we could somehow transfuse his decisiveness into the rest of our forwards we’d be well set. He makes our attack better. Sammie Szmodics had a quieter game but is the sensible choice for his relentless harrying. Liam Delap remains a brutal specimen of human.

All proceeded according to plan. We were superior but didn’t find the final touch in the first half. Second half we were still on top and ten minutes in found a fabulous goal. Things continued to meander onwards for the twenty minutes that followed. Leicester pushed up a bit but only had potshots.

Then came the “series of unfortunate events”.

A throw-in down the left, Davis to Delap. Delap rolled Fatawu and drove towards the penalty area. Ndidi clipped his heels. Free kick. A pause in play as Ipswich replaced Szmodics and Hutchinson with Jack Clarke and Wes Burns. Jens Cajuste was stripped and ready, presumably to replace Phillips, but fate wasn’t having that.

Phillips and Davis stood over the free kick. The angle worked for a right footer and Kalvin might have taken it, but he’d recently smashed one into the wall, so fate wasn’t having that one either. Instead Leif hoiked the ball onto O’Shea’s head at the back post. Dara might have gone for goal with his free header, but he’d missed one earlier, so headed it back into “an area”.

Hermansen might have caught and held the ball, ending the move, but instead flapped it to Chaplin. Chaplin controlled it and jinked inside. Fatawu could have let him shoot through bodies, but instead hit Chaplin like a defensive lineman blitzing a quarterback. Referee Tim Robinson could have blown for a penalty but just stood there.

The ball squirmed out to Facundo Buonanotte who mis-kicked to Davis. Davis knocked it to Phillips, who might have been tackled but expertly popped the ball over his marker. In the next touch he might have steadied himself. Instead, spurred on by a crowd raucous and raging, he took another, impetuous touch, over-running the ball. He contested the clearance, he was late, he tried to pull out, he caught Ricardo Pereira.

As play stopped, Ipswich arms were spread wide, questioning and pleading for that penalty. Leicester’s players took a moment to register there might be a sending off to be had. Bodies then surrounded the official, words in his ear. Referee Tim Robinson could have stopped to think. Phillips wasn’t arresting a promising counter attack, the tackle was neither reckless nor endangering and he attempted to pull out of it. The referee could have found a reason not to issue a game-changing second yellow card. Phillips was dismissed. The video assistant referee Stuart Atwell might then have intervened to award a penalty. He demurred.

It took 17 minutes and another 50-50 call in Leicester’s favour for the series of unfortunate events to have their full effect and rob us of a well-earned lead. Ten games, just us and Wolves left in #NoWinsClub. Wedged firmly into the bottom three. Spurs and Manchester United to come.

Yet, I am not discouraged. Sometimes it is good to leave furious rather than miserable. And, boy, was I furious. More furious than I’ve been at a group of officials in two decades. I like to think I am phlegmatic about most refereeing decisions. This blog is not full of laments about the men and women in the middle. I can stand error. Referees in the EFL make split-second decisions in front of baying crowds. What constitutes a foul is subjective – a matter of personal judgement not objective truth. I know I am a partisan judge and I never feel wronged for too long.

Yet Saturday burst the dam. Not because of error. Though I felt Chaplin should have had a penalty, Phillips should not have got a red and Morsy should have got his 94th minute free kick, I have seen enough Ipswich fans accepting of the last two to concede maybe they were just 50-50 decisions. I might even take the penalty non-award as just an error, one of those things.

Mistakes don’t get me, but unfair process does. This is where the evil that is VAR comes in. Having an on-field refereeing team make instant decisions is a flawed but consistent process. It is the same for everyone. The officials make judgements in real time. They make errors but the process is always the same. I never had any sense that bad decisions for or against us in the EFL reflected anything other than the luck of the draw.

VAR complicates the process. It takes the real-time judgement at full speed, by a close-attending official who can see, hear and feel momentum, force and reaction, then overlays it with another decision by someone viewing slow-motion and still images. The second process takes time and no one wants to wait, so they rush it.

The two sets of information are often contradictory, so yet more instructions must be issued to prioritise the first, on-field, judgement over the second judgment. These addendums, though phrased in a language of objectivity - “clear and obvious” - introduce yet more subjectivity. What is “clear and obvious” to me might be “open to question” to another. No incident is alike, so no single standard is possible. Where speed is king, mistakes inevitably follow. Where process is constantly messed with, complexity and confusion comes. Where subjectivity reigns, unconscious bias and arse-covering rules.

Thus far this season, Ipswich are zero to three on VAR interventions. “Ref’s Call” was the mantra pre-season. It took until Matchday Two for “Video Ref’s Call” to give a penalty for Leif Davis’ trip on Savinho at the Etihad. On-field primacy had been restored before half time, when Davis was bundled over in the other penalty area. The bar for “clear and obvious” was located conveniently somewhere between the two incidents.

Against Everton, at full speed on-field referee Michael Oliver felt that Dwight McNeil had illegally interjected his leg into Jack Clarke’s backswing. The video ref thought it “clear and obvious” from a video still that McNeil’s leg had been planted there (possibly at the dawn of time) and Clarke had irrationally decided his shooting action could somehow pass through it. Ref’s call but not for thee.

Last week, the on-field referee Lewis Smith decided at full speed that the “contact with consequence” that Harry Clarke exerted on Keane Lewis-Potter took place outside the penalty area, even if both players eventually fell into the box. That time “ref’s call” apparently didn’t even need to be respected because where a foul takes place is not a question of subjective judgement but an objective fact, so we were spared the formality of Smith going to the monitor.

Much of the first year of the history degree I teach on is dedicated to discussing what it is to know a historical fact.1 Next year I might suggest we skip any discussion of post-structuralist and materialist conceptions of history and have the students proceed directly to debating the PGMOL’s definitions of subjectivity and objectivity. Potential coursework question, “To what extent can one know empirically what constitutes the beginning and end of a foul?”

In my, admittedly partisan, estimation, Fatawu on Chaplin was as clear a penalty as Davis on Savinho, and Robinson’s original decision was less defensible than in the cases of McNeil on Clarke (J) and Clarke (H) on Lewis-Potter. Yet that’s not really the galling thing. My first reaction to hearing about the “Ref’s Call” directive was that it would be something else for officials to be inconsistent over. To properly work, the video refs would have to let some bad decisions stand and stick to their guns when they caught flak for it. 

Inevitably this would be something they would feel more comfortable doing against lower profile clubs, where the price for letting the original call stand was just Gary Lineker having a chuckle about it on MOTD. The result of this process from our perspective is that VAR feels like a fail-safe for ensuring Ipswich Town don’t get any big marginal calls. Got away with a free kick close to the edge of the box? Not so fast, buh. Softish penalty? Yoink, not for you.

Clear and obvious penalty you haven’t got? Well, the bar for overturning these things is very high, see. The mechanics of this machine are designed to chew us up and spit us out.

I suppose I could find a way to rationalise all this. Maybe, these are just the same old marginal calls that every football supporter up and down the land complains about. However much a pattern seems to be forming, they all have their individual explanations, even if sometimes that explanation is just “we made a mistake” or “bad luck, tough titty”.

But sometimes isn’t it better to take the fury home with you? Right now, I’d rather leave angry than dejected. Anger is an energy and I am energised as all hell now. We played well and they scammed us out of our two points. So what? That’s nothing. We have 28 games to make more points. Leicester maintained almost their entire first team from last season and even with our complicated summer refurbishment we’re already better than they are and improving. I’ll take our odds on catching five points on that lot.

After ten games, we are 18th. We have led in five games and not won. We’ve got half a point a game. We have pundits giggling at our players and manager. People are writing off our boys, both the new signings and old hands, but we can see so many of them kicking on in front of us. I swear something is brewing here.

For a few weeks the only thing to do was get depressed because our own errors were killing us. Now we’re furious because of soft yellows, every marginal call going against us, one-sided VAR interventions. We’re angry and we’re mobilised. Fuck ‘em. No justice, just us.2 Let’s go.